China to Increase its Robotics Production to be Used in the Manufacturing Sector

China is planning to triple its annual production of robots that are used in the manufacturing sector up to 100,000 in the next five years. According to a industry regulator, the target pursed as the country is busy in upgrading its labor intensive manufacturing by using technological innovation. Furthermore China is aiming to sell more than 30 billion yuan of service robots by 2020 even with the surge in demand in the healthcare, entertainment and education sectors.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology the initiative details in the growth in the robotics industry is included in the national 13th Five Year Plan with an aim to increase the quality of equipment, in the past year China only produced fewer than 33,000 manufacturing robots. The strategies will assist the Chinese robotics industry in achieving healthy growth despite the challenges coming from overseas providers. China is the world’s biggest market for industrial robots in 2013, already surpassing Japan based on a report by the International Federation of Robotics. The organization said that the country will continue to drive up demand for different types of robots due the automation of factories along with the increase in demand for service robots. An increase in labor costs and shortages are also pushing manufactures in adopting robots to use in production lines. Also robots will be able to complete complicated tasks in the near future.

The future of robotics industry is heavily overlaid with other technologies ranging from virtual reality to artificial intelligence, since this areas local companies are working on. The ministry is also encouraging Chinese robotics manufacturers in gaining a bigger presence in the high end market that is currently controlled by robotics giants ABB Group in Switzerland and Fanuc Corp in Japan. The goal will fuel the growth of Chinese robot manufactures such as Hubei Huachangda Intelligent Equipment Co. and Siasun Robot and Automation Co. although the robotics industry is still growing, companies are eager to boost their competitiveness by spending heavily on research and development of industrial robot components.

These components are still being imported from foreign countries that have steep tariffs which in turn increases the costs of robots. Siasun plans to acquire competitive international and domestic components manufacturers once the Shenzhen listed company raise a total of 2.96 billion yuan from institutional investors.